Midori Chen
Her first relationship is a Boy-Girl statistic — so much so that neither of them deserves a name, just Subject A and B, completely equal in anonymity. Subject A has black hair, wavy from frequent braids
A Growing Up Interlude
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Issue 3
Latest Reviews
Featured Interview
Newest Essay
The Junk
Elise Glassman
Before Claudette and Gates even had time to sit down on the buttery
leather sofa or pour a drink from the glass pitcher filled with water
and lemon slices, Conor Volkman, Jr. came to the waiting room
to fetch them.
The Doppler
Matt Galletta
He held his wife’s hand as she lay on the exam table, her shirt
rolled up to her breasts. The obstetrician spread a nickel-sized
glob of jelly onto his wife’s stomach.
Woman in Water: Corrine and the Far Away
Savannah Schroll Guz is an illustrator and mixed-media artist based
in Weirton, West Virginia, just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She
has exhibited her paintings and mixed-media works in New York City,
Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh, and is currently at work on a graphic
novella about the Battle of Blair Mountain, part of the West Virginia
mine wars. Learn more about her work at: www.savannahschrollguz.com.
A Landlord Is an Act
Jaclyn Watterson
My sister had taken up with a landlord who owned our building,
most of the others on the block, and a toilet factory. My sister
had taken to putting toilets in the most outlandish places, and
could not be reasoned with. Peg called it a phase, but my sister said,
Flushing is both ancient and contemporary, in every sense.
Production For Use
By Susan Daitch
In the city there are trails of discarded three-dollar umbrellas. They blow into tangles when they meet one another, black nylon (though maybe it’s not nylon, but something even more synthetic, of more recent vintage than the nylon, say, of the Nixon era) and metal spokes like so many Y’s, V’s, and palsied X’s.
All of Them Comely
Jaclyn Watterson
No surprise, the Yankee Doodle Dandy is trying to date me. He
is some sort of man, or a jack-o’-lantern. He looks like cotton
candy.
You’re not, I told him yesterday, my type.
Death, Life, And Everything Else
Susan Carlson
I. Death
A bird in the house means it.
But when it slips through the vent
hides its new life on the other side of the closet wall –
its scratching and crying sounds
When I Get Fat, My Dad’s Gonna Throw a Party
Kevin Leonard
From their fathers,
some people inherit mustaches,
beer bellies, rounded shoulders,
a pigeon-toed right foot,
some money, or a half-blind right eye,
Worth it to be Wrong
Siamak Vossoughi
They were walking back from a football game. It was almost
winter. It was cold and gray, but it had been cold and gray for
months in Seattle, so there were varieties, and today the air was
almost clean enough to qualify as a clear sky.
Trying to Lock All Windows and Doors
By Richard Chiem
She looks drowsier than yesterday, her hands barely gripping the wheel, making a soft left off the main road and toward a dirt path hidden in the willow trees. Cars pass and glide away in the rearview mirror.
Rub Hair in the Wound
Lonely Christopher
This is culture and this is the idea that kidnaps itself. The wild
hour come, a dissolving logic through the brigade and its
assembly — toy-sized dramas, precessions at excellent volumes,
the inevitable cruelty displayed in boys, those who are unreachable as they
are always reaching for themselves and missing and reaching again.
make something
Giorgia Sage
I write her a letter:
smile today
because birds have hatched in this sunlight
and they are beautiful in that they are alive
as are you on this day, in this sunlight
Spared
By Ann Ryles
Mary Montrose envisioned duct tape. Silver duct tape. A fat sticky strip across her daughter’s mouth. That would do to keep Kevyn quiet. Sixteen-year-old Kevyn made Mary wish for human mute buttons, snipped vocal chords, or her own loss of hearing.
Meditation with Good Posture and Swine Flu
Jeff Gundy
Were we ever among the chosen? Did we seize on this place
too late, or too soon? Is all this temperate sunshine
a blessing or a threat? We all say aye when prompted, then
we mostly say nothing for a while except for the speaker,
Epistle Presley
By Jon Riccio
Dear Mom,
Swam 20 laps in the Elvis pool today, one for each sighting, my sequins-mimicking complete. Elvis Superior says my hair has girth. And I quote, “Damn Elvis-in-Training (EIT) 2, those sideburns deserve a marquee of their own. We’ll get you a dinner theater yet.”
The Kleptomaniac’s Giraffe
By Jon Riccio
Now that you can leave the house in a mask
we’ve got some stealing up to do. Smaller items first: aspirins,
nutmeg, peppermint from a tin. Antibodies have nothing on anti-theft.
Excluding Small Talk
By Noah Falck
How isn’t the weather? The parking is more than a bitch, a cancerous mole. The water cooler is filled with holy water.
Anatomy of the Dabbler
Vivian Abenshushan
Translated by Adam Morris
The dabbler is a philosopher without a system; he believes, like
Pascal, that “Since we cannot be universal and know all that
is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about
everything.
Papery Bewick Swans/1956 Buick Super
By Maureen Alsop
They were those who carried light through the house — ghost-less aftereffects. I stayed silent on the telephone, and heard their voices lean against a drugstore wall(somewhere west, perhaps from Eau Claire).
Excluding Happy Hour
By Noah Falck
The dark feels its way through the crowd, shows up after the hit & run on Main Street. Those out of breath/out of work build a river outside our window. We watch it move.
A Coherent Desire
By Francisco García González
Translated by Mary G. Berg
Even though it was his native language, John Anderson had his problems with English. He’d had to use the internet in order to find a worker to hire. That’s why he’d posted the ad.
Hatred Ages You, Too
Francisco García González
Translated by Mary G. Berg
When she gave up her efforts to adopt a Jordanian child, it was
the hardest decision she’d ever made in her life.
Brigitte returned devastated from her trip to Amman.
How could people bear to live like that? When she got back, she went
to the Caribbean for a vacation.
The Gift of the Pantyhose
Jennifer McGaha
Thick-boned and freckle-faced, Barbara sat between Christy and me in our third-grade classroom. It was 1975, and our class was part of a cluster of four classrooms dubbed “The Beehive.”